Turning plans into action.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

It is nearly impossible to make a long-distance road trip without "some" planning. One has to have a route, perhaps some motel reservations, fuel stops, etc. It's much the same with our journey to "Health & Fitness". We need a plan.

For some - the plan is an obstacle. They have never MADE a plan so they just show up and say - I want to lose weight and/or get fit. Because most of us arrive at this decision from a place with little or NO attention to nutrition or fitness the best place to start is by knowing WHAT our status-quo is.

I suggest that you track every bite you eat (note: I didn't say count calories). Just write down EVERY bite, lick, taste, and sample of food accurately in a notebook or use the nutrition tracker here. Do this for 2-3 days. On another page write down all intentional exercise (walking, swimming, treadmill, strength training).

After about 3 days - sit down and accurately calculate the total calories you are eating and "expending" in planned fitness minutes. This will give you a baseline. In order to LOSE weight you are going to need to DECREASE your calories and INCREASE your fitness minutes.

Here is the planning part. You need a deficit of 3500 calories to lose a pound of weight. You can plan how many calories is your daily maximum given your level of fitness to lose 1 pounds over a week (for instance). This would be a 500 calorie deficit a day. So now you have a plan.

The best way to put it into action is just to DO it. Take ONE day and try to stay in range and get your planned fitness minutes. For example - your range might be 1750 to 2100. Try to eat in range and get your 20 minutes of planned cardio. Try it for ONE day! Don't look further. THEN at the end of that one day take another review of what you did.

If you went over on your calories - plan to get under the next day and maybe try for 25 minutes of exercise. Take it ONE day at a time. This is how you put a plan into action - just START. Don't worry about 5 days 7 days 2 weeks out for now. Just START. Do something for ONE day!

DOMESTICDIVA76
Very true! Great blog! A lot of times i'm guilty of the thinking 'if I pay out money for a diet program or piece of workout equipment I will automatically lose the weight.'. You really DO have to put in the work to get the results. 1759 days ago